Slow Fade

Haggai 1:9 (ESV)

You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.

The Jewish exiles are coming back to their Jerusalem, back from the land of Babylon with the full intent of rebuilding the temple of the Lord. Yet, to this venture something has occurred. It was not the trials and tribulations of opposing forces. Nor was it the flip flopping reversal of government. It was straight forwardly priority. The people came to Jerusalem and rightly they decided to build shelters for themselves. These quickly needed to be updated and upgraded to suite the occupant’s desires and before long, quite simply, life had gotten in the way.

Like most things, it did not start with a crushing choice, no it started with the field needing sown. Then the windows need fixed, the wall needs patched, had a couple more kids and need a bigger house… It doesn’t take long for “life” to set men on a very worldly trajectory, and yet it is a “slow fade, as we give ourselves away”. To help refocus and inspire the people God sent his servant Haggai, to help the people see not their glories but their sin, that repentance might follow.

It is so easy to see because it is so familiar to us. As homes are constantly in need of either upkeep or upgrades, as kids have this practice and that game to get to, as hunting season just started or is almost over, rain is coming and I need to get the harvest in… the list of things that we busy or lives with is long and extensive. It is the same list of things that we put above our spiritual walk. It is the same list we use to excuse us from church, from giving, from bible study, from prayer. In the end the statement is I am not willing to sacrifice (blank). Just as the Jews were unwilling to sacrifice their home upgrade to build the temple so we are unable to sacrifice those things we love to build God’s temple.

Jesus tells us that “whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matt 10:37) God’s temple is the very body and life of the Christian. It is his bride and his body on earth. What are loving more than the body of Christ? What are you prioritizing more than building of his kingdom? What are you placing in the seat of worship that belongs to him? The American Church is not worthy of its master, this is not new, yet the idea that Christians don’t even need to put any effort into trying to be worthy of their master is.  Will we attempt to be worthy of our master or simply continue to spit in his face?

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO

Lasting

Micah 7:18 ESV

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity

And passing over transgression

For the remnant of his inheritance?

He does not retain his anger forever,

Because he delights in steadfast love.

As politicians and Hollywood types are falling left and right to the reality of their sinfulness on full display. More and more are Americans finding that men are deeply sinful and the depth of our wickedness is beyond finding out. Only to be plumbed by God himself.  This is what God has done. He plumbed the depth of our sin and sent his son to pay the debt we owe. Living a perfect life of submission to God and dying for our rebellion. This from the heart of steadfast love. This steadfastness, under opposition by us, was done because of the delight of God.

As marriages, relationships, employments, church membership, community involvement, all seem to be failing and falling under the intense desire of men and women to be free from commitment, not wanting to be, or show, that which God delights in, steadfast love. God has always shown steadfast love to his chosen even when stupidity and sin tried to overwhelm the relationship. Even when those most loved turned from the one who loved them perfectly. He returned their rebellion and hatred with steadfast love. Not loving them when they were loving him but when they “were yet sinners” giving his life for them.

The irony is as our society seems to pride itself on love and emotional fidelity, more and more such expression is hard to find, either in on TV or in churches. In this bleak and black landscape, the steadfastness of true Christian Fellowship stands out. I say “true” because often our Fellowships are plagued by the same waywardness that is propagated throughout our society. Often times “church growth” is simply flock stealing. Moving sheep from one pasture to another rather than finding the lost and saving them we find the found and move them. As church attenders no longer feel the need to commit to a community of brothers and sisters but want to maintain their right to leave at any time. No, the church has done nothing to be salt and light in this situation. This then is a call for us to be that which we were created to be, salt and light, not to lose our saltiness and find ourselves unable to even help the manure pile!

Let the sweet delight of God be our own. Let us grow in Christlikeness and show steadfast love to those who do not deserve it or more accurately who will never deserve it. Are you willing to show steadfast love to the body and bride of Christ?

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO 

Glory to God

Psalm 147:1

Praise the Lord!

For it is good to sing praises to our God;

For it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.

It is amazing to realize that there was a time when worship in song was debated in Christian churches. When the people of God wondered if it was sanctioned by him in the Church. Fortunately for all of us search was made of the scriptures and it was plain to them that any who would look upon the great blessings of the Lord would be compelled to “sing the wonderous love of Jesus, sing his mercy and his grace”, as the hymnist says. What a natural response it is to sing of the grace and mercy of those who bless us and no one has blessed us more than God himself.

Yet singing has fallen on hard times. The majority of us in the pews believe we are no longer able either to read music or carry a tune. We have begun to believe the falsehood that all God’s gifts come without work attached. Even believe that salvation can occur without sanctification to follow. As if you are given a gun and assume you can hit what you are aiming at. Becoming a good shot takes loading the weapon and firing it. Missing and doing it again and again. Such is the gift of salvation. We receive it then we work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12).

Such is the majority of the Christian walk. God has given us men who can preach but not many start able to do it well. It is a gift that must be honed. God has given us men and women who can sing but that to comes with work. The Psalmist continues in this psalm to recount the greatness of the Lord and commands that we should “sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre!” To be overwhelmed by God is to lose sight of yourself. Often, we become “self”-conscious when we first try to do things we are not good at. This word is just a cover though for our own “self”-centeredness, instead of “Christ”-centeredness. No, most of us will sing a little off key, or maybe not so “little”, yet who are we focused on?

We desire to sing well for the glory of God. Yet do we desire it enough to practice? To we desire to play the “lyre”, piano, violin, guitar, bass, that he might be glorified more? It is easy to bring worship into ourselves and make it about ourselves when our vision slips from him who saved us from ourselves. This then is the Christian’s constant battle to keep Christ in the center that we might learn how to praise him. Let us work at getting better at singing, at learning an instrument, at clapping on beat, that we might do it well. Let us not fall short and fail to try again. Just like walking and riding a bike, we will fall. Yet, if we are to do it well, we get up and try again until we stop falling as much or at all.

“I remember when I was a lad

times were hard and things were bad

but there’s a silver linin’ behind every cloud

just four people that’s all we were

tryin’ to make a livin’ out of black-land dirt

but we’d get together in a family circle singin’ LOUD.” – Jonny Cash

CURCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO

The Foolish

Exodus 14:3 ESV

For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, they are wandering in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.

Psalm 136:4,13 ESV

To him who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever;

…to him who divided the sea the Red Sea in two, for his steadfast love endures forever;

It is a wonder of biblical proportions. The Red Sea divided in two. A wall of water on each side and an entire nation able to walk between followed by an entire army drowned. As Christians approach the miraculous what can be said? Either you believe in a God “who alone does great wonders” like raising the dead or you don’t. Considering the who this article is sent to and who is likely to read it. I will assume that all believe in his ability to raise the dead and therefor his ability to divide the sea. However, are we prepared to be foolish? To lean so heavily on him that we are required to watch him to great things?

There is no shortage of stories of foolish Christians dying because God chose not to walk in the furnace with them. For every Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego there are the thousands martyred in Rome, as spectacle for their entertainment or lights for an emperor’s garden. Yet, God was in both places and allowed or lead both groups into the furnace some he brought home some he returned to bear witness and sing songs of his steadfast love. George Mueller said “If we desire our faith to be strengthened we must not shrink from opportunities where our faith may be tried, and therefore, through trial, be strengthened.”

The Israelites camped right where they were told and it was foolish, if God did not do great wonders. Are we willing to let God put us in very foolish places that he might be given glory? Are we willing to stay there when it looks more and more foolish? The three men who refused to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue weren’t really foolish until they chose not to bow the second time. They double downed and went all-in. The Christians who refused to say Cesar is Lord weren’t foolish until they were accused and brought before the examiners and then remained steadfast. They may have looked stupid when they were burning as lights in Nero’s Garden yet they conquered an empire that none could conquer, by burning so brightly they conquered the darkness of that evil age.

What foolish thing is God calling you to double down on? To foolishly believe that Preaching his word will actually change lives by itself? That prayer in faith really can conquer the darkness. That his steadfast love really does endure forever, even in the hardest of times? Will you look foolish that you might sing of his love forever, in this age and the next? Will you stand were he has planted you and watch as the sea divides before you?

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO

The Days Ordained

Psalm 139:16

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them.

“God made you special, and he loves you very much.” -Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato

To come to scripture is to come not to words on a page or even to thoughts written long ago, but rather it is to come in contact with a living thing. Scripture is living and active. As Christians read it, it changes them cutting away the refuse of our sinful nature. It sustains our feeble sense and provides us with another, deeper look at our Lord. To open the text is to invite God in. This is nowhere more apparent than when the reader comes to a verse “they know” and the Spirit of God enters into the reader and helps them understand it so as to bring comfort into the reckless and seemingly chaotic circumstances of life.

Psalm 139 is a verse many Christians have loved throughout the millennia of the church. It has brought comfort and wisdom in dark days. It has given Solders and Martyrs hope knowing that they will not die unknown before God. That he is always looking out for them. It has given Politicians and voters wisdom that life does not begin at birth or at the point the child is desired, but rather when God has begun the work of knitting a child together.

Like many others this last week the dark days around us have begun to weigh on me. Looking around at a great nation being torn apart. Where worshippers have to decide if they will need armed guards in the pews and if Churches should remain unlocked during the hours that the congregation would gather together. These are not questions knew to Christians. Christians have had to gather in fear from the very beginning, notice Peter had to knock at a locked door after he escaped prison, and Jesus had to go through a looked door to eat with his disciples, yet they are new decisions for Christian Churches in the United States, our time of oddity is coming to an end, we are going to have to join the rest of Christian history, leaning on the providence and provision of God in dark times when we don’t know the hardships that await us or our children.

There was a time that the greatest challenge we thought we would have to face is declining numbers. Watching as the communities we love reject the God we adore and abandon the assembly of the righteous. Yet this is not our lot, instead we were given the task of shepherding the Church through not an ambivalent culture but rather a hostile one.  Yet these are not simply the times we live in. These are the days “formed for” us. Just as Bob an Larry tell kids that God made them special, so too has he made the days they are to live in. So too has he made the days we are to live in. Not only did he “form our inward parts” he also made these times for us that we might show his glory. He not only made us special he made the days specifically for us to fit in and bring glory to him in.  You see this wisdom play out in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien as the wise Gandalf is imparting wisdom to the young Frodo.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO